Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace AS has entered into contract worth Euro 124M with the Royal Malaysian Navy for delivery of the Naval Strike Missile (NSM) to their six new Littoral Combat Ships.

Boustead Naval Shipyard Sdn Bhd is building the ships based on Naval Group’s Gowind Class design. This contract is a follow-on to the agreement announced 9 April 2015 for NSM shipboard equipment.

The NSM will be deck mounted and integrated to the SETIS combat management system provided by Naval Group.

“This contract provides the Royal Malaysian Navy with an important surface-to-surface-missile capability and confirms NSM’s very strong position in the international market. NSM is currently chosen by Norway, Poland, Germany and Malaysia”, says Eirik Lie, President of Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace AS.

Naval Strike Missile

The Naval Strike Missile is a long-range, precision anti-ship and land-attack missile developed by the Norwegian company Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace (KDA).

The state-of-the-art design and use of composite materials is meant to give the missile sophisticated stealth capabilities. The missile will weigh slightly more than 400 kg (880 lb) and have a range of at least 185 km (100 nm). NSM is designed for littoral waters (“brown water”) as well as for open sea (“green and blue water”) scenarios. The usage of a high strength titanium alloy blast/fragmentation warhead from TDW is in line with the modern lightweight design and features insensitive high-explosive. Warhead initiation is by a void-sensing Programmable Intelligent Multi-Purpose Fuze designed to optimise effect against hard targets.[21]

After being launched into the air by a solid rocket booster which is jettisoned upon burning out, the missile is propelled to its target in high subsonic speed by a turbojet sustainer engine—leaving the 125 kg multi-purpose blast/fragmentation warhead to do its work, which in case of a ship target means impacting the ship at or near the water line.